I fired it at a forsworn briar-heart continuously until it ran out.

Then I recharged the staff and repeated the process *four* times.

Nothing.

He kept casting lightning spells like nothing happened.

Yes. It's bugged on consoles.

I believe that it was fixed with one of the unofficial patches...last time I read.

I find most staffs useless and that one extremely so.

It sure works on dragons.

What others have said. It's not supposed to be useless but it is.

It works, but NPCs have a much lower spell casting cost than the player, often have more magicka, and (this is unsubstantiated) may not suffer from reduced regeneration in combat. So it functions per se but you won't find much use in trying to drain an enemy dry.

That said, it's very useful to restore your own magicka.

this plus it somehow for unknown reasons got nerfed in the development

it is suppose to be one of the most powerfull magic items known in Tamriel, plus it is a pretty extensive questline to get it with some nasty fights to get it

feel sorry for the console players tho

"Halldir's Staff" is the only staff I've ever found truly useful on my characters. It's special trick is casting a ranged AoE soul trap. Very useful when mammoth/Giant hunting as a robe wearing mage. Letting Serana have a staff of fireballs during the DG questline is also a good idea.

Interesting.


As in not actually absorbing 20 points per second?

Ironically, Requiem turns the Staff of Magnus into one of the most powerful weapons in the game.